Society should evolve to Communism
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 4 votes and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...
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Communism - Society where people have duty to, if able, help others who are lacking of food, water, education, medicine, clothes and housing, by producing and providing those things to them.
“Every time you own something, it means that someone else doesnt.”
“Every time you own something, you steal it from someone else.”
“Land cannot be private property since every human needs land to live. Giving it all to few humans would deny all others of it.”
“Private property has already destroyed all noble ideas from the past.”
It has degraded human to a mere animal who works only to satisfy most basic urges.”
“If you look at countries like North Korea, where people dont have lots of private property, we see all the old values of being loyal, being humble, living a simple life come into play. “
- https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/27/23/8410
- http://www.curiousmeerkat.co.uk/questions/much-land-earth-inhabited/
- https://www.edgeofyesterday.com/time-travelers/john-locke-unlocked-a-modern-idea-of-private-property
- Dictionary of Oxford Languages
- https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2021/country-chapters/north-korea
- Ibid
- ibid
You are arguing from an assumption of scarcity, while I argue from an assumption of abundance. If I buy a loaf of bread from a bakery that has one hundred loaves, there are still 99 for the next buyer. Even if that bakery sells out, there is another across the street. No one loses. In fact about one percent of bread produced ends up as surplus that is “recycled” into other products. Therefore there is an abundance of bread and not a scarcity. (1)Pro needs to show how my owning the loaf of bread necessarily takes a loaf from someone else.
I own an automobile. From whom did I steal it? There were hundreds of cars at the dealership, and I only bought one. Everyone along the line got paid including the salesman, the dealer, the manufacturer, and even the government. There was no theft involved.Pro needs to show how my owning the car is an act of theft.
In reality only about 10% of the available land is actually inhabited by humans.(2) Therefore it is again abundance vs scarcity. There is still an abundance of land available.
What are these noble ideas? It appears that the advancement of the individual is directly linked to owning private property. Compare the feudal sharecropper to the modern landowning farmer. (3) Oddly the feudal sharecropper’s situation is very close to one’s life under communism
Under communism, everyone works to satisfy those most basic needs, Communism is “a political theory….in which each person works”
Yes. Let’s look at North Korea. Is it a communist paradise?
Ownership doesn't prevent others from owning something else.
C Abundance is better than scarcity
D Feudalism, much like communism is not good.
E Communism produces scarcity, not abundance
- https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691152387/stalins-genocides
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong#:~:text=Mao's%20policies%20were%20responsible%20for,government%20was%20characterized%20as%20totalitarian.
- https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/most-capitalist-countries/
- https://americanhistory.si.edu/citizenship/learn/government-basics/11/learn#:~:text=The%20economy%20is%20controlled%20by,is%20a%20capitalist%2C%20market%20economy.
- https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-owns-stock.aspx#:~:text=WASHINGTON%2C%20D.C.%20%2D%2D%20Gallup%20finds,it%20has%20been%20since%202008.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_market_economy#:~:text=They%20concluded%20that%20China's%20contemporary,retained%20by%20enterprises%20rather%20than
- https://www.routesnorth.com/sweden/is-sweden-a-socialist-country/#:~:text=What%20is%20the%20Nordic%20model,services%20and%20good%20workers'%20rights.
- https://www.google.com/search?q=communism+defined&rlz=1CAJCUZ_enUS958&oq=&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCQgBEEUYOxjCAzIJCAAQRRg7GMIDMgkIARBFGDsYwgMyCQgCEEUYOxjCAzIJCAMQRRg7GMIDMgkIBBBFGDsYwgMyCQgFEEUYOxjCAzIJCAYQRRg7GMIDMgkIBxBFGDsYwgPSAQs4OTk4OTVqMGoxNagCCLACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
- https://www.google.com/search?q=communism+defined&rlz=1CAJCUZ_enUS958&oq=&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCQgBEEUYOxjCAzIJCAAQRRg7GMIDMgkIARBFGDsYwgMyCQgCEEUYOxjCAzIJCAMQRRg7GMIDMgkIBBBFGDsYwgMyCQgFEEUYOxjCAzIJCAYQRRg7GMIDMgkIBxBFGDsYwgPSAQs4OTk4OTVqMGoxNagCCLACAQ&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_communist_party_rule#:~:text=Communist%20party%20rule%20has%20been%20criticized%20as%20authoritarian%20or%20totalitarian,forced%20labor%20in%20concentration%20camps.
"Gallup finds 61% of Americans….. own stock"
”Society should evolve to Communism”
”Communism = Society where people have duty to, if able, help others who are lacking of food, water, education, medicine, clothes and housing, by producing and providing those things to them.”
”Society should evolve to…… Society where people have duty to, if able, help others who are lacking of food, water, education, medicine, clothes and housing, by producing and providing those things to them.”
“USA, Canada, Finland and other "capitalist countries" you listed are all Communist or mostly Communist.”
“You cannot have democracy without Communism since majority wants for rich people to pay for society's improvement. Democracy is the path to Communism.”
“Nothing prevents people in Communism from owning stock. “
“ USA is already close to Communism. Canada, Finland and Japan are even closer”
“Hey if you dont wanna debate by definition given in description, then dont accept the debate. That concludes it.”
“.”Society should evolve to…… Society where people have duty to, if able, help others who are lacking of food, water, education, medicine, clothes and housing, by producing and providing those things to them.”,
- https://thelawdictionary.org/false/#:~:text=Definition%20%26%20Citations%3A,to%20perpetrate%20some%20treacheryor%20fraud.
- https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/false-dilemma-fallacy/
“Hey if you dont wanna debate by definition given in description, then dont accept the debate. That concludes it.”
“Bye”
“For example, food belongs to the hungry, and taking food for yourself would steal it from thehungry”
“ Countries like Canada, Sweden, Japan and USA are mostly Communist, maybe even more so than North Korea”
Hey if you dont wanna debate by definition given in description, then dont accept the debate. That concludes it.
Bye
PRO badly misdefines COMMUNISM to suit his lecture's needs. The definition provided would earn any student an F in any Economics 101 class the world over. PRO's argument has nothing to do with economics and in spite of framing his argument as "SOCIETY should," PRO demonstrates no interest in public policy. PRO merely presents a commonplace universal utopian ideal as a theory of moral obligation without devoting a single brain cell to evidence or experience or pratical consideration. PRO fails to define SOCIETY but based on the globalism of his examples, his plan of moral obligation seems to apply to the whole world without any interest in implementatin, effect, or sustainability- such are the justifications of cartoon Bond villains. PRO should have also fulfilled his obligation to define EVOLVE. Evolution can just mean change but since Darwin that word carries a definite connotation of adaptation to a more sustainable configuration, PRO should have explained up front whether he felt universal sharing was likely to improve mankind's destiny or merely recommended a righteous seppeku by human ideal. Without any sepcifics, any history, any experiements, any knowledge of economic or even biological precedent we are left with a child's digest of the Sermon on the Mount, minus the eloquence or supernatural reassurance of success
The BURDEN of PROOF is 100% PRO's and PRO shrugs off this burden then runs aways from it like an injured wild hippo might from a clown with a saddle. PRO is not here to persuade, only to recycle past punditries with an acolyte's faith-based toolkit. This VOTER, for one, likes to see some evidence supporting a structured rational framework in an argument
PRO's best argument is a restatement of Christ's Golden Rule: do unto the sons of others as you would your own son. As a moral justification for Communism I suppose this works well enough but as a plan for real humans adapting to extreme overpopulation, technototalitarianism, and a burgeoning sixth extinction level event the rational priority is to make sure somebody's sons (and of necessity, daughters) survive
CON's job here is pretty easy since all he has to do is rebut PRO's assertions with evidence or demonstrate the lack thereof. I think CON succeeds in this rebuttal by roughly challenging point by point, although I give few points for style or accuracy and certainly, although I find myself disagreeing with CON more often than not. I don't think CON makes much of a case that ownership is not thef or communism produces scarcity but CON needs only make it clear that PRO's proselytizing stands unproven, he need not prove his counterclaims and mostly I wish he had not tried. CON does show that PRO's definition of Communism is fake news and that the geo-political history of what has been called Communism produces the opposite of the Christian effects PRO hopes for less freedom, less equality, less prosperity, stagnant, short-lived slave state
In round 2, PRO outright states that there are contradicting notions of properties, and all contradiction being irresolvable, the anarchist's war cry "property is theft" must be true. PRO lists North Korea, China, Japan, Canada, Finland, Sweden, and the US as examples of emerging classless, propertyless Communists societies although some of these examples offer polar extremes in onlook about social equity and ownership. The more examples PRO gives the fuzzier his conception of Communism seems to be, merging finally into a doubleplusgood singularity. If a nation does something PRO aprroves of, then he will call it Communism
PRO seems to know he's beaten and switches tactics- he insists we accept his false definition of communism as valid and failing that, attack Captialism irrelvantly- as if the way to make
Communism plausible is to criticize Captialism. That's a very 20th Century American way of thinking about socio-economics- two polarized forces locked in a zero sum death match. It was bullshit propaganda in the age of Krushchev and Reagan and it remains bullshit propoganda today
CON wins in round 3 by demanding an Economicly correct definiton of Communism and by pointing out that PRO's argument is actually irrelevant to Communism or any socio-econoic theory. CON wisely demands to see PRO's evidence, research, proofs
PRO knows when he is beat and runs away from CON's demand for facts as fast as possible, only leaving the minimum necessary to avoid technical while nevertheless forfeiting the last 40% of the debate, ignoring CON's demands for substance and depriving CON of any opportunity to refine.
ARGs to CON
SOURCES to CON for using some. When CON demanded that PRO show his research, PRO scampered
CONDUCT to CON. Although PRO did not technically forfeit the second half of the debate, by any normal standard PRO's refusal to engage is just as chicken as not showing up at all
Communism is garbage. At R1 I fully expected my vote would go to con, with so many of pro's points being kinda BS (everything is theft, NK is ideal...)
That said, pro was able to show that applesauce is better for the people by utilitarian standards (to include that morally we ought to not give special status based on blood relation). Con's replies boil down to applesauce being a taboo word; yet failed to show that in the form suggested it wouldn't be better (indeed with countries we instinctively favor being more applesauce than capitalist).
One of the smarter things pro did was not going for absolute governments oversight but rather just a few vital areas, as seen with saying cars are outside the scope of consideration.
I'd have been more likely to buy con's lawyering, had it not waited so long. A key flaw in the execution is that I have no difficulty with the substitutions (e.g., applesauce above), so with pro's case not being reduced to word salad with confusing and/or contradictory definitions it holds.
Sources:
They lean to con for the effort put into research. None of them clicked with me to tip anything but with arguments to pro I am more liberally mitigating said victory.
Legibility:
Con had two full rounds all bolded, and one most nearly all bolded. A little bit of bold text can help, but acting like it is all special and super important means none of it is, and of course this distracts from reading his points.
Conduct:
Pro used a tactic of not answering anything from con in the final two rounds. While this carried the day, it was disrespectful... That said, con's kritik against the debate setup was also problematic; but it seems a fair point mitigation against the side whose tactic of questionable sportsmanship was successful.
Con gets a conduct point because Pro dropped 2 rounds.
Con gets source point as Pro used no sources
Pro clearly stated the definition of communism. Pro went on to make some more generalizations of that definition and started talking about property.
Con clearly got distracted and did not address what the debate was about: namely, that the debate was about whether or not society should evolve so that everyone would have a duty to produce property for those who have no property. This was from the definition stated.
Key word here is duty. Con would have easily won the debate by stating simply that "people who choose to work should never have a duty to provide for people who do not choose to work." Instead, con spent too much time attacking communism and the concepts of production instead of directly contesting the stated definition. Sadly, point for Pro on arguments.
Pro's first argument is basically a write-up on the contradiction of individual rights and human rights. He constructs a compelling case for mandating the equitable distribution of resources as a means of serving the public good. Where Pro falters is in his advocacy of communism as a liberating force, and then immediately referencing North Korea as an example of communist ideals in practice. As one would expect, Con highlights the repressive nature of North Korean society. Con's main response in round one was an argument in favour of private property because, in his view, there are enough resources to go around. I think the main problem with Con's argument was twofold. First, Pro did a good job of cementing the fact that a constant state of abundance cannot be assumed. Therefore, Pro argues that the equitable distribution of resources would alleviate the plight of the disadvantaged when there is no abundance. My second problem with Con's argument was that he never really established that communism would be destructive in a world with abundance. Rather, his arguments seemed to merely prove that communism would be less efficacious in a world of abundance than it would be in a world of scarcity. Much of the debate also centred around what societies are and aren't socialist. In the end, Pro convinced me that countries like America, Canada, and Japan satisfied many aspects of his definition of communism, which effectively boils down to "communism = welfare state." However, Pro did himself a disservice by focusing so much on property rights, because as Con points out, many repressive countries (he lists the Soviet Union) were avidly against property rights. Ultimately, I was convinced that The most successful countries of the modern era integrate communist principles (as they're defined in this debate) into their societies through their welfare state. That being said, I am not convinced that the wealthiest countries in the world share the communist perspective on property rights. This topic brought out another key contention in the debate, the definition of communism. On this issue, I will say just one thing: I understand Con's frustration with Pro's unconventional definition of communism, but it is well established that definitions pre-defined in the debate description override definitions derived from intuition or the dictionary.
In short, I think Pro was able to make an interesting case in favour of equitably distributing resources for the purposes of looking after the disadvantaged. Con never made a concrete response to this, other than with his argument from abundance, which as I previously explained, is stained by two big flaws. This is the primary reason arguments are going to Pro. The rest of the debate was about what societies are communist and what constitutes theft. With regard to the presence of communism around the world, I thought Pro did a good job of proving that the modern day welfare state is fundamentally communist, while at the same time, I thought Con did a good job at tearing down North Korea and combatting the idea that countries today share a communist (again, as it is defined in this debate) property rights doctrine. I view this as a pretty even point. The argument over theft was fairly boring. Instead of proving why the theft in question was justified or not, it was just about throwing around the label and hoping the moral baggage associated with the word would constitute an argument. Because neither side gave me a good reason to care about whether communism necessitates theft, I am not considering this point.
I am giving Con the conduct point because Pro basically resigned from the culminating rounds of the debate.
I’m not taking a position on whether or not the terms in the resolution are debatable. My opinion on that is irrelevant to the question of whether this vote is sufficient. If a voter doesn’t see this as debatable, then as long as they justify that perspective, that is sufficient under the voting standards of this site.
Much of my argument rests on the use of the term"communism".
I asked BK for an authoritative source in support of BK's usage.
According to DART rules ..."Ensure your definitions are outlined. If disagreeing with any established one(s), make a brief case for the superior authority of your alternative(s)."
from https://info.debateart.com/style-guide#first-round
Ergo the premise and the description are debatable.
In response to the appeal regarding Trent0405's vote:
I agree with Barney's decision.
Voters are not obligated to award any points they do not wish to award. That includes choosing not to award sources, even when one side does not use them. The voter elaborated on his reasoning regarding sources below.
Similarly, while a rule may establish that something is debatable, the voters are not held to the standard of having to afford weight to that type of argument. Voters have leeway to determine whether these arguments make a difference in their decision.
As for arguments, the voter explained his perception of the argument presented by Pro and, at least as far as I can tell, it references what Pro said in the debate. He also considers specific arguments presented by Con. That is sufficient.
"What "sources" did BK use? ( zero )"
Hey Prefix, I see you have had some issues with my allocation of the sources point. First of all, in order to win sources, there has to be a glaring difference in order for me to consider allocating the point. In contrast, debaters who make arguments that are marginally better than their opponents can still merit winning the three points associated with presenting better arguments. Basically, Pro did not make any precise empirical claims where not including a source would be egregious. Moreover, I did not find the sources you presented particularly compelling, thereby leaving me no choice but to leave the sources point tied.
According to rules definitions CAN BE DEBATED.
It has been a while since I used this site, but I always remembered that a definition predefined in the debate description is pretty unquestionable. I would be curious to see what part of the voting guidelines you're referring to.
"Exactly what "argument" did BK put forth? ( zero)"
I explained this in my vote, I thought BK posited a decent, if simplistic, argument in favour of allocating resources toward people who have less. He was effectively making the case that letting individuals hoard large amounts of resources is bad if they could be given to the needy. As he said in the debate, why sit on a surplus of food when there is a hungry man outside your door? Again, it is a simple point, but it worked.
Whiteflame and/or Oromagi are the people to tag for appeals.
What "sources" did BK use? ( zero )
According to rules definitions CAN BE DEBATED.
Exactly what "argument" did BK put forth? ( zero)
The vote bears NO resemblance to the reality of the debate.
Let me know how you decide after a "second review"
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>Reported Vote: Trent0405 // Mod action: Not Removed
>Voting Policy: info.debateart.com/terms-of-service/voting-policy
>Points Awarded:
>Reason for Decision: See Votes Tab.
>Reason for Mod Action:
The vote was found to be sufficient per the site voting policy standards.
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Dont forget Communist Canada and Communist Japan.
How's come in most Communist countries (China, North Korea, and formerly Russia) there is so much famine and the leaders of the countries are so rich? I thought the rich were supposed to give to the poor. Look at Kim Jung Un, he is super fat meanwhile the famine ravaging his country is as bad as it's been in 20 years.